Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Civic Duty....

Well, yesterday was primary day in Texas. I had a meeting in the morning or I would have gone on my way to work. As it is, I went after work. It's my first time to vote since being back in Texas, so I'd never been to this particular polling place before. When I lived here before, the polling places were in schools, usually elementary schools. I looked up my voting location and got X Community Center, then looked up directions. Not too far from my house, though not as convenient as Arkansas, where I simply walked across the street. I kept thinking I'd passed it up, but then I found it. I actually wound up following a couple of cars down a very dilapidated road to what is a very dilapidated community center. Actually, it's a small cinder block building, with no where close to adequate parking for this type of event. Good thing the weather was nice because the line backed up all the way to the end of the street. I grabbed a cereal bar and my book cause I figured I'd be in that line until midnight. Shortly after getting in line, someone mentioned they had two lines - one for Democratic and one for Republican. I got to go to the short line, well actually I walked right in and voted and left. I'll leave it to your imagination as to which line was long and which line was short. I was just extremely happy to not have to hang around for hours to vote.

Texas also has something to do with voting in the caucus later in the evening (I'm still trying to wrap my tired brain around this as I don't remember if from before). I'll admit, I didn't attend. I went home and did yoga. Come to find out this morning, all the caucusing places were no where near big enough for the folks that turned out, so it would probably have been a miserable experience anyway.

I knew Texas would be close and it was - HC squeaked by, but BO was close on her heals. I've talked with friends and we're just puzzled. It seems to me like several of the candidates just aren't over loaded with experience. This morning it dawned on me that it's not that the parties can't find folks with experience to run but it's probably that the folks with the experience don't want the job. Can't say as I blame them. This country is expecting a lot from the new President and I'm thinking whoever is elected is going to have a hard time meeting those expectations.

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